The 9/11 Forum

In summary, Chandler fails to account for the distinction between:

1) static capacity versus dynamic load-displacement response
2) Peak force versus average force
3) as-built capacity versus non-nominal (collapse) capacity

These things completely explain the difference between his expectations and the real world. Because of his misunderstanding, he believes he's found an incontrovertible smoking gun in the physics of collapse. Because he believes he's uncovered the unassailable PROOF of assisted collapse, at this point he must also believe he's the chosen one, the one who will go down in history as cracking the whole thing open with something objective which no one could refute...

Given that, I imagine he fancies himself quite humble knowing history is going to remember him as the man who showed Bazant to be a fraud in a 3 minute YT video. Hahahaha... that'll be the day.

The reality is, his errors are so bad I really question whether he should be teaching high school physics. Seriously. There are a lot of incompetent high school teachers out there, he seems to be one of them. I hope he keeps the pseudophysics out of the classroom.

Thanks for your detailed reply, Logic told me that something was not right with some of Chandlers analysis, I am no physist so did not want to make such assertions lightly. I wonder if Chandler has some sort of motive, or he just does not realise what he is saying here.

OWE, that series of posts was a thing of beauty... It underscores how sloppy Chandler was and how lazy all those who repeat this meme are... in addition to simply not understanding the basic physics and analyzing the visual record.

Illuminist14 raises the question of Chandler's motives... which is a completely separate matter. OWE implies that he is really outside his depth in this as many physics (and others) teachers are. If that is the case it is simply a matter of incompetence, and hubris. He can't know what he doesn't know and so he produces a reductionist Mickey Mouse explanation... then puffs up his chest and thinks he's found the holy grail smoking gun proof.

All of his sloppy (incorrect) work would hardly be noticed if there weren't several other things in play. For one the NIST OCT explanation was understood to be incorrect, perhaps intentionally so it is presumed to deceive the public. The thinking goes that this was a deception from NIST, not incompetence and they must therefore be hiding the inconvenient truth that there was a more nefarious explanation that the fire driven sagging truss explanation. Ah ha... Chandler nailed the SOBs and caught them lying and covering up something and that something was of course was that the cause had to be placed explosives. Now all those who didn't by the changing OCT/NIST explanation for the collapse had the explanation to rally around and the scientist who took NIST down. Up on top of their shoulders he was pushed... a physicist/scientist who cracked the NIST deception... a hero!

Chandler did, of course produce a reasonable trace analysis of the 2.25 second descent of a point on the roof line of Bldg 7. And once again he caught NIST in an act of deception because they started the clock earlier disguising the period of decent of the roof line. This guys rock thought the people who felt they were lied to by their government (NIST). But of course Chandler failed to really analyze the vids and explain and consider ALL the observations which show at least that was was collapsing in the 2.25 seconds was not the entire building... but the shell, the facade.. the curtain wall. By the time one can trace the motion of a point on the roof line in that 2.25 second descent... there is evidence that the guts... the structure and floors inside the building... were no longer standing. Good evidence. And if this was true and the facade had been displaced, distorted in the process it would have been unsupported and there would have been no resistance to slow its descent. If it did slow after 2.25 seconds perhaps this means that the separated from the structure at around the 8th floor or 100 feet above street level and the slowing down might have been the bottom crushing as it met the resistance of the earth... Perhaps.

But no one cared to look carefully into the observations because a 2.25 second period of descent was deemed impossible unless all the structure was destroyed simultaneously over 8 floors... because they saw a BUILDING collapsing not simply the shell.

I'd say at least a portion of the motive is ego, hubris and even money... in that for some in the truth movement... 9/11 is an industry... a business... and a full time job and they are not going to walk away from that one.

All is not as it seems.

It now seems (has seemed for some time) that all three buildings suffered some serious problems in the core area which led to their total destruction. The cores could not be seen obviously and so what was happening there has to be inferred from careful study of what we could observe... the behavior of the shell and how the building came apart. So here again explanation MUST be driven by accurate observations. The best science, engineering and physics analysis based on faulty observations and data will produce the wrong explanations/findings and conclusions. This is at the core of the work Tom has done.

So we're left to ask... are Chandler et al incompetence and driven by hubris or are they intentionally leading a following of people who sense that the OCT was a lie and can be lead off and away from the intellectual curiosity that might lead to understanding what happened? It's hard to know their motives.

There is some interesting discussion about this same core cabal of the 9/truth movement who has weighed in on what happened at the Pentagon that day. The public is faced with a similar paucity of evidence, fogged observations, even withheld evidence such as the videos... and what amounts to be a very hard to believe OCT about the path and speed of the plane. Here again the public does not have the professional expertise to parse the aviation issues and look to *experts* to tell them what is or what is not possible. As with the WTC it is not possible to reproduce crash studies to test theories. And who weighs in on what happened with a scientific explanation? You guessed it.. David Chandler (and several other *9/11 Truth Scientists" who have analyzed it all and declare that the OCT explanation of a jumbo jet makes perfect sense.

Should one consider that if Chandler et al produced incompetent work in their WTC analysis they produced the same quality of work at the Pentagon? If so would that mean that the OCT about the jet at the Pentagon was likely false as their explanations about what happened at the WTC was? What's going on here?

We can assume malicious intent on the part of Chandler et al... an attempt to deceive or fog or derail a real scientific approach... or blundering incompetence which accomplishes the same thing. Is the 9/11 truth movement's refusal to drill into the science at the WTC and accept sloppy work attributed to the beliefs of so many that our government seemed to have engaged in at least a cover up and has a history of deception on all sorts of events from the JFK assassination, Iran-Contra. to the Vietnam war.. to the BP oil spill ...Hurricane Katrina... and the financial melt down. Everywhere we look we see that our government has been not coming clean or offering accountability.

I think form what I gather, Chandler is expecting people like me (layman in physics) to accept his analysis at face value, so I thought I would ask for the opinions of people who know, (you lot). I appreciate all your replies on this. The truth movement jump on things like the A&EFOR911 TRUTH, because there are professionals who believe the same conspiracy theory as them, just because they are enginers it must be true is the picture I see emerging.

Illuminist14,

There is a bit of a misconception about AE911T out there and no one seems to be concerned with clearing it up.

The first one perhaps is that AE911T as an organization does or sponsors and research into the destruction of the WTC or even what happened to the Pentagon. For one they will absolutely not even discuss the pentagon... despite the fact that there were structural and building related issues. Why don't they? Don't know.. but that policy is written in stone.

AE911T is a PR marketing operation promoting the explosive controlled demolition thesis. This was created by I believe Jim Hoffman and a few others who came up with the reasons why a non assisted collapse was impossible. AE911T assembled bullet points of what they believe is evidence that the destruction of all three buildings was from a MIHOP... not a 19 hijacker cause. Several of their members, including Chandler, Cole, Szamboti, Jones, Harrit etc. have produced their own research in support of the ECD thesis.

AE911T's stated purpose is to achieve a new investigation into 9/11. Since the first one was so inadequate no one should have a problem with this demand. And so this group has sought building professionals to sign their petition lending credibility to this demand. Most of the signers are not familiar with the details of the underlying research, but of the bullet points presented in their presentation called *Blueprint for Truth* which they sell.. or I believe can see seen online in various lengths.. up to 2 hrs. AE911T has not enlisted any engineers, or scientists to vet or verify or independently look into the underlying research they present in their BFT presentation. Many of the *professionals* who signed the petition simply want a new investigation and do not support the ECD conclusion.

It should also be noted that AE911T is dodgy at best about their petition signers credentials. These include anyone licensed professionals in related fiends such a electrical engineering for example. The actual number of professionals who have experience with structures is perhaps a third (guess) of the number claimed, but by no means are they being accurate when they claim that say 1,500 architects and building engineers have signed their petition. It should also be noted that there are well over a few hundred thousands licensed architects and engineers in the US and most of them likely had some interest in the events of 9/11... yet after 6 years of the petition being online they have likely less than 100 professionals per year signing their petition.

There are very few qualified engineers and architect who work at or run AE911T day to day... It is staffed by dedicated volunteers who assist in the various aspects of marketing the AE911T ECD thesis... not in scientific research or even a structural modeling of the buildings... or doing finite element analysis of them.

To call AE911T a collection of experts on those buildings is a gross over statement. What we have is nothing different than any advertising campaign... with the message being ECD... and listen to us because we represent architects. Not true either... AE911T never consults with or polls its architect or engineer petition signers for anything but financial contributions.

Another 9/11 deception... AE911.

That's my point entirely to these truthers, who dpend on A&E4911T son heavily, do you think all 1,000 plus professionals have sat down and looked at ALL the evidence? Of course not! Therefore if that was the case I bet the number would be in the few hundreds at best.

Illuminist14,
All the evidence? I would have to say...none of them really have. At best they've looked at the BFT presentation... and a few of the YouTubes and DVDs produced by the truth movement such as Loose Change or Mysteries or In Plane Sight or Zero...most of which ask the same questions and use the same explanations for the evidence. There are papers on the web which look at the events at the WTC... by Chandler, Jones, and Harrit and others but probably less than 20 or 30 of those who signed their petition had read those and I would imagine less than a handful of signers visit this site and none on a regular basis after Tony Szamboti stopped participating. So the signers seemed to have reached their conclusions based purely on a few presentations of BFT or similar.

Several on this forum have pointed out that the AE911T bullets points contain factually incorrect statements and this determination is not rocket science and outside the grasp of the engineers and signers of their petition. This means that they simply have accepted these statements at face value or haven't bothered to closely examine them on the merits. That's troubling.

There are many things wrong with the official account and the work of NIST, FEMA and the 9/11 Commission reports... and hence we do need a redo or a new investigation which properly gets at what happened. But the conclusions drawn by AE911T and most 9/11 Truth advocates is a bridge too far and not based on the evidence... as much as based on what they think the evidence is (and means). In a sense the truth movement as Tom has demonstrated so well is as flawed as NIST. This is not a polarized either or dichotomy.

Recently David Griffin organized some a *consensus" panel - http://www.consensus911.org/. "The purpose of the 9/11 Consensus Panel is to provide the world with a clear statement, based on expert independent opinion, of some of the best evidence opposing the official narrative about 9/11."

Simply looking at the wording of the mission one can see that they was an agenda not of finding the best evidence, but of opposing the OCT. Then move to see who the panelists were and their qualifications to evaluate observations, physical and technical evidence:
http://www.consensus911.org/panel-members/. While everyone is entitled to their opinion this hardly looks like unbiased technical experts who are presented with evidence and then examine it an evaluate the meaning of it. The process uses the Delphi method to vote on the evidence as if a fact is a fact if it has a vote of 85% of this rather biased panel. How crazy is that? Look at the *best evidence* and it is fairly obvious this contains conclusions and some factually incorrect ones at that... such as that steel was "ejected" up to 600 feet from the towers.

We clearly are in the realm of garbage in equals garbage out in many cases... and most of even these experts can't see that.

I think there is plenty of problems with the OS, but many many more with the vast majority of truth movement material, atleast material I have seen. I am not against a new investigation, but truthers thinking that thermite and explosives were used is for me extremely unlikely at best.

Half the arguments they use, such as iron rich microspheres and thermite residue are quite easily explained, yet these are still classed as smoking uns by some.

SanderO wrote:OWE, that series of posts was a thing of beauty...

Mighty nice of you. Maybe too nice when I look back on it. I wanted to make that short. It is a simple thing. Why is so hard to explain? It always has been. Looking back at the third law thread linked above, I'm almost embarrassed by how poorly everyone except Dave Rogers addressed this issue.

This was a thread happening around the same time:

http://911blogger.com/node/20094

Riddled with misconception. Smart people don't get this. Physicists, engineers, and PhD chemists don't get this. In the matter of physics-based objections, this is a big deal. It forms the basis of most of the variants of CD claims or 'proofs' by way of alleged violations of physics. The collapses were too fast... they shouldn't have accelerated... there should have been a jolt... the resistive force was less than the capacity... the 3rd law requires equal and opposite destruction...

I'd like to comment on some of the statements made in the 911Blogger thread, but first I want to emphasize that a lot of these points are academic. It's important to understand these ideas to have a good foundation but many things argued simply don't matter at all. It's the blocks mechanics thing again - the notion that somehow the sections really were blocks, the collapses really were 1D, and so on.

From what I see, anyone who properly masters some of these very simple concepts is miles ahead of the pack, on both sides.

It seems humility is the beginning of wisdom on this subject. I didn't understand it at first, so I can't be harsh on anyone. Initially, my misconception was the same as Chandler's. Difference being, I didn't make a bunch of videos and and seek international notoriety. Still am not, despite understanding it, and despite seeing how few people do understand it.

From http://911blogger.com/node/20094, let's start with the original statement and reply:

Frank Greening wrote:I would say that Chandler's slight of hand is the implied notion that Newton's 3rd Law is universally applicable, even to a collapsing building. The fact is that when a building is collapsing by multiple floor failures the reaction force obviously fails to balance the downward force because the yield strength of the failing columns is being exceeded.

Greening makes a couple of mistakes, both stemming from the same thing. First, he chooses to say the 3rd law is not universally applicable where it is applicable in all classical mechanics, under which progressive collapse falls (forgive the pun). Second, by using the term "reaction force" instead of resistive force, he miscategorizes the argument he really wants to make. Newton's 3rd is a reflexive relation, how can the reaction force not be of the same magnitude as its complement? His objection to Chandler's claims is valid, but he mis-states it and starts the entire discussion off on a bad footing.

Steven Jones wrote:No. This is a blatant and fundamental error. I have caught many a student on the equivalent of this nonsense, as I taught Newtonian Mechanics for over 21 years. Newton's 3rd law is always applicable, even in the case you mention, Frank. The key is that the "equal and opposite forces" must act on DIFFERENT bodies. Suggest you consult a basic physics or mechanics text if you don't understand that.

Jones correctly points out that the law is applicable to collapsing buildings, so score one for the overunity guy. On the face of it, it's not clear what Jones is talking about when he mentions the "'key" being the force acting on different bodies, and I'm still not exactly sure. I can guess, based on subsequent discussion, that he's referring to the horse and cart example. Again, technically correct but in actuality not only failing to address Greening's argument but also working against Jones and Chandler!

Because of Greening's poorly chosen language (which, all due respect, does reflect a misunderstanding of the situation to some degree), Jones is essentially tilting at windmills. Jones is correct and partially addresses what Greening actually said, but the conversation is already off course from the start. The real issues will be lost amongst the uproar that Greening thinks the 3rd law doesn't apply to collapses.

Without going on to recap the whole torrid exchange, captured both here and at 911Blogger, it seems to me that neither Greening nor Chandler/Jones could ever manage to get a shot off in each other's direction. Chandler, full of huff and arrogance, is ignorant of the application of physics to progressive collapse, cascading failure and so on. This is odd for someone schooled in physics. Greening, for his part, is an excellent chemist but not a physicist and is unable to accurately articulate what is wrong with Chandler's position. This is odd from someone published on the subject of progressive collapse.

The general reaction to the debate, on the other hand, is armchair physics gone wild.

After some reflection, I've decided not to reproduce comments and my reactions. Some are members here, heh heh.

What I will say in summary is this: Jones, Tony Szamboti and Gordon Ross all share two common characteristics - they support Chandler and yet they make statements which come within a hair of refuting Chandler. Most interesting. It's like the strange disconnect between this subject and The Missing Jolt. Do these guys talk to each other? Do they read each other's articles?

Szamboti understands peak-and-trough nature of the load displacement. He understands the difference between peak resistance and average resistance and how the latter is less than even static capacity. Szamboti's argument is that the jolt from this peak resistance is missing. The argument is flawed on a number of counts but all the same Szamboti has the tools to refute Chandler's misunderstanding, yet does not.

Jones knows that Newton's 3rd law can be misapplied by failing to properly identify the bodies on which particular forces act. This is part of Chandler's error and Szamboti's flaw in the missing jolt - that the upper section really acted like a rigid block in 1D instead of a deforming complex body in 3D.

Ross knows that a monolithic rigid block on top is unrealistic, but doesn't make the connection to the arguments of his associates.

If these four individuals could pool their collective understanding, they would mutually refute each other and be on the right track. Weird, huh?

re: all of OWE's posts on this thread so far: YES! That's what I'm talking about!
What do I mean? Well, what I'm NOT talking about is OWE's physics (both technical, and theoretical) which are way over my head. [With all the attention/work he puts into his posts, hopefully any scientifically qualified people will respond in kind.]
So, one might think that that doesn't leave me much to talk about or comment on. BUT ...
We do need certain fundamental things to move towards a truly scientific consensus on what happened to these buildings. For that we need: 1) quality science-based investigation & analysis regarding the specifics (usually provided here, on this site, by people such as Major Tom, femr2, achimspok and others). AND 2) FOCUS on the key specific discrepancies and differences so that we can grapple usefully with these without getting lost (either thru just general lack-of-focus/confusion or being misled by manipulators). (In terms of helping us focus, this is usually provided here, on this site, by the above mentioned investigators AND by OWE.)
OWE, it's been a while, it seems to me, since you've brought your super-combo of analytical skills to bear on one of these "burning questions" of the Twins and #7. (Getting too caught up in refuting "darkwing 'thought' " probably was one of the main factors; not-specific-to-911 other damands certainly always a factor.) Billions need to know, millions want to know, thousands are offering theories, but hardly anyone is willing and able to help all of us focus our attention on the essence of each critical difference. You have done this, you can do this, you must ... KEEP DOING THIS!
I would suggest to everyone reading this: in everything you review about 9-11, try to identify the key "burning questions":
1) what are the most essential questions that need to be answered;
2) what are the various (almost always more than two) opposing theories being proposed to answer them;
3) what are the PIVOTAL points of disagreement between those theories.
Bring what you think corresponds to these 3 things aspects here to our forum and get OWE (and everybody else who can) to help us focus our attention, "compare and contrast", and resolve!

Yo, Tony:

http://www.debatepolitics.com/conspiracy-theories/41640-9-11-did-towers-fall-free-fall-speeds-41.html#post1061554641

Tony Szamboti wrote:No, this guy OWE (I just love these anonymous psuedonyms) hasn't explained away any of Chandler's points.

He is wrong about the column resistance and his mechanics are incorrect. There is no way around the fact that a deceleration would be observable when the columns collide.

He then tries to add suspenders to his explanation by saying the lower force on the upper section is expected because the upper section is falling through weaker material, that is the floors, and in essence saying the columns missed each other. It would have been impossible for the columns to miss each other in a natural collapse.

This guy OWE's explanation is nothing more than a bunch of circle jerk and does not explain the situation at all. I really have to wonder when I see you link to these long winded explanations which amount to nonsense.

Feel free to come over here and argue this. I'll PM you so you don't miss it.

oh dear tony...